Zoe E. Baird Quotes

This instruction referred to the illegal COINTELPRO program whereby FBI Director Hoover not only ordered the FBI to illegally spy on African American organizations, but actually interfere with their operations and by leaking personal sexual information and trying to ruin the reputations of numerous Black leaders including Rev. Martin Luther King. See {584581}. This illegal program actually specifically named and targeted the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Congress of Racial Equality, and the Nation of Islam. Hoover ordered that the program be kept secret. However, in what is a humorous historical twist, a civil rights organization organized a “black bag” burglary—the same kind of illegal break in that the FBI had been practicing against Black groups and others—broke into an FBI field office and stole this and other documents which they then made public. Otherwise the contents of this program might never have come to light.

Feynman was then a young brilliant graduate students working with colleagues far senior to him. He not only criticized the lax security of the safes, but when combination safes were later installed, he would infuriate the army security people by “hacking” the safes when scientists had lost their combinations.

The “wrong” people to Helms. Were Americans who disagreed with his methods and politics—especially members of Congress who wanted to make the CIA more accountable for its actions. If nothing is ever written down and everything is secret, there is no practical way of holding the agency accountable in a democracy. Helms was later convicted to perjury for lying to Congress.

Snowden, was a contract worker for Booz Allan assigned to the National Security Agency (NSA). He felt that some of the NSA activities were illegal and unethical and tried to complain to NSA officials who rebuffed him. Despite the fact that he had signed an agreement not to do so, he copied many critical, classified documents that exposed much of the NSA activities that the NSA officials had denied existed—including lying under oath to the Senate. Laura Poitras, the journalist, was not accused or suspected of anything. However, on the belief, that Snowden might have given her some classified material, the American government prevailed upon the British to seize her personal computer. Snowden made the programs public as the highest level intelligence officials were lying to Congress about them. The position of the US Government was that Snowden had violated American Law. Others praised him for revealing illegal activities in which the government was engaged and was lying about including to the Congressional oversight committees. Snowden repeatedly outsmarted the government and ended up getting asylum in Russia. In the case of the computer material, he had encrypted the material using “strong encryption” which most computer experts believe is impossible even for the best code breakers and computers to crack. See {628105} . In this quotation he argues that all journalists should use strong encryption on ALL of their notes and other materials that they receive from confidential sources. Government officials had tried to keep strong encryption secret even though it was invented by a private scientists with no government support or involvement. They failed, but have been trying to find a way to defeat strong encryption since. Ironically, most non-technical private individuals and companies do not use it even though it is quite easy and the software is free. Editors and publishers are ambivalent in that they could not comply with court orders or show them to employees even though it is their own property if the individual reporter or the source did not want them to.

This radical reform did not make much headway. The “need to know" standard used specific knowledge to signify the status of different officials and was intended to minimize the likelihood of intelligence leaking as few people saw the whole picture and understood the implications. But that was the great weakness in that the major purpose of intelligence is to analyze the information and guide the nation’s policies and responses to events and situations. Without all the information available so many intelligence and other officials are unable to ‘connect the dots’ and see the picture emerging. The attack of September 11 was a classic example where much of the information that was known never was conveyed to most people and so no one had a big enough picture. By the time one could establish a ‘need to know’ it was too late to utilize the conclusions even if they were reached in time.

The leaks not only did not stop, but they became worse than ever.

Trust is undermined in 2 ways. Allies and others who speak or negotiation with the government in confidence, lose trust in the government to maintain the appropriate level of confidentiality and security over information. And second, citizens lost trust in the government because they have been secretive and kept information from the citizenry that usually is just embarrassing or being kept secret to avoid opposition. Worst is when the leak shows that the Government has been lying to the public. Where there are what the public regards as legitimate secrets, public trust is not diminished, but those instances are not typical.